Home Sweet Home!

It turns out that I ended up catching a flight to New York one hour after arriving in Colombia.  So, I didn’t get a chance to see anything more than the lovely Bogota airport.  I guess it is better to leave something to do in the future.  The cherry on top during the return was the side trip through Detroit en route back to Nashville.  Very long day, but it feels good to be home so far.  The return to reality (and the next adventure) begins!

Thanks to everyone who followed along with me during my travels.  The blog was fun for me to do, and awesome to read (most of) the comments.  Before I go though….

I updated the Travel & Stats and Travel Map pages with the final details.

I have also sifted through my 2,000 something pictures now, and have posted a few of my favorites from each country at the shortlink below.

http://bit.ly/gXJTLR

hope to catch up with all of you soon.

Aeropuerto, Lima, Peru

After two days of waiting around the Lima airport on standby, I made the decision to head to Bogota, Colombia to improve my chances of getting back home. Bogota was my original finishing point, but I had given up hopes. It looks like I will get a little taste of it after all.

Trust me. The only pictures I could have from the past two days are of me drooling in boredom. I’ll spare you.

Sacred Valley & Inka Trail, Peru

Back to Cusco to meet Danny and finish off the trip with a bang.

Rather than take a tour bus to see the sights, Danny and I opted to rent motorbikes and have our own tour of the sacred valley. But, first, we had to get Danny some motorcycle lessons. They took him up to a muddy field which was home to a large black pig for his first lesson. Oh Peru, sometimes I wonder about you. It worked out though, and, despite driving the last hour through a teeth chattering cold rain, the last motorcycle tour in South America was awesome.

The following morning we were picked up at 4am to begin the four day trek of the Inka Trail to Macchu Picchu. Hiking up the “gringo killer” stairs at 13,000 feet was amazingly difficult. On the first day, the unacclimated lungs required a stop every five steps or so of the final day one climb that was equivalent to a 210 story building. The body adjusted over the next three days, and we woke on the last morning at 3am to make the final push to Macchu Picchu right around sunrise. The ruins were really awesome, but the trek to get there was equally rewarding.

It’s really a pretty amazing operation. For the seven folks in my group, there were 12 porters and one guide. These porters carried all the food, tents, and communal stuffs. They also set up our camps, cooked our incredibly delicious meals, tore down our camps, and cleaned up after us. So, we would leave them there each morning with a full camp after breakfast, and start out on the trail. These guys would then clean every thing up, strap on a 60 pound pack, and would blaze past us gringos about an hour later. We wouldn’t see them again until they were clapping for the panting gringos as we arrived in another fully set up camp where warm drinks were waiting for us. Truly amazing.

Again, pictures don’t really do this justice, and I was too selfish to deal with the iPhone camera.

Reality is only a few days away, and I am looking forward to it.

La Paz, Bolivia

I didn’t really have much time here (1 day coming and 1 day going), but it is worthy to post. Picture the highest mountains that you can (up to 21,000 feet), take a giant ice cream scoop right out of the middle, and insert 2.5 million people living in little brown houses clinging to the steep hillsides….. That’s La Paz.

This is the cheapest country in South America, and I realized it when I was arguing with a cab driver about the extra $0.50 he wanted to charge me to get to the airport from my $10/night hotel.

It’s all about huffing and puffing up the steep, high altitude hills through through the markets here (especially the mercado negro, “black market”), which are really just make shift umbrellas over tables where they literally sell anything. I mean there was a table of just cheese graters. Another table of hats. Another table of cell phone chargers. Another table with just breakfast cereal. You get the idea.

The most important thing I learned is just how much awesome stuff there is to do in Bolivia. I really want to come back sometime.

Off to Cusco for the last week.

There are a few pictures, but you should really look up some aerial photos of La Paz to see this amazing city tucked in the valley. It literally prompted a “whoa” when I first saw it.

Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

I made a big push to get into Bolivia to see the salt flats (Salar del Uyuni) in southwest Bolivia, but I arrived in La Paz to find out that the bus terminal was closed because “everyone is drinking” for Carnaval. The trip to Uyuni doesn’t make sense anymore. It would mean 28 hours on buses for 24 hours in Uyuni, not to mention some of the best parts are flooded and inaccessible right now. Meanwhile, I found an all inclusive (including flight) trip to Rurrenabaque for an Amazon River trip that turned out to be cheaper than my original plan!

I guess technically this isnt the Amazon River, but it is one of the major rivers from the Andes that all combine to form the Amazon a bit further downstream. The downstream Amazon is so wide that you cannot see the shores from the middle. So, one of the advantages of going to the upriver Amazon basin is that it is small enough to really see wildlife along the shores. This is also the wet season, and the banks of the rivers are extremely swollen allowing us to get right under trees with huge birds and monkeys.

To get to our camp was a bumpy, flooded three hour ride by 4×4 followed by a two hour trip upriver in a little skiff piloted by our adventurous guide Juan Carlos (who was awesome). The camp was very simple accommodations including a cot with mosquito net, a few playful monkeys, and an alligator family. You had to walk a foot away from the dad’s head on your way to the chow hall!

We rode around the river looking for wildlife, sloshed through the swamps looking for anaconda, took a nighttime trip with flashlights looking for Caimans, and fished for Parana (I gave the guide a run for his money by catching three).

All in all, this was a great detour, and I am very happy that things turned out this way. Now I’m off to La Paz for a bit before heading back to Cusco to meet Danny and finish this awesome trip off with a bang!

A few pics are below, but you will have to wait until I get the pictures from the real camera together. I was too greedy to take iPhone pics on this epic little adventure.

Reality looms, but the adventure continues….

Lake Titicaca, Peru

Oh Peru…. You and your transportation, first the flight from hell, and now my first bus with you breaks down and leaves me stranded on the side of the road for 5 hours. And, thanks for helping me miss my first night on Lake Titicaca. Oh well, you gotta roll with the punches on a trip like this…..

I spent the day on a boat tour through the highest lake in the world (about 14,000 feet above sea level). We visited two islands in the Lake. Uros is a set of floating islands that are made out of reeds. People first started living out here hundreds of years ago to avoid the invasion of the Incas. Today, it is an oddly modern ( & touristic) community where the locals entertain tourists and show them how they live (picture old school thatch huts with solar panel operated tvs) It is truly impressive to see these people living in the middle of a freezing cold lake and transporting via hand-made balsawood boats.

The next island was Taquile which is about 2.5 hours by boat from Puno (the port city where I’m staying) in the middle of the lake. From here you can see the shores of Bolivia and Peru. It is another overly touristed islands, but it provides a way of life for the people here, not to mention tons of photo ops.

Pics below…..

Cusco, Peru… Pt. 1

This place is super touristy, but for good reason. It is amazing. A bustling little city of 300,000 that is at a gasping-for-air elevation of 11,500 feet. Little colonial houses and huts cling to the green mountainsides. The buildings in the central are a mixture of old Spanish churches and ancient Incan ruins. The natives wander the streets in traditional bright clothing. It may be best described by Captain Keywan as “Disneyland”.

This will be the jumping off point for the Inca Trail trek to Machu Pichu with Danny in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I am heading out towards the southwest into Bolivia for a bit.

A couple of pics are below, and I will post more when I return to Cusco.

In the words of the Merry Pranksters, “Further…”

Miraflores, Lima, Peru

I mention only this neighborhood because I am spending such a short amount of time in Lima. I had intended for possibly three days, but that has been cut down to 20 hours.

A big part of the problem was my travel to get here. I was awake in Porto do Galinhas (where I was diving) at 6:30am (4:30am Peru time) on Tuesday. A bus left for the airport in Recife at 8am (6am). My flight to Sao Paulo left at 11am (9am) and arrived at 3pm (1pm). My flight from Sao Paulo left at 7:30pm (5:30pm) and was supposed to land in Lima at 12am (10pm). However, inclement weather forced us to the alternate airport in Pisco. We were told that we would have to wait just a little bit until the weather cleared in Lima, and given that I was on an international flight we were not allowed to get off the plane until Lima. 11 FREAKING HOURS LATER!!! 11am (9am), we finally got the green light to head to Lima, and we finally hit the gate at 12pm (10am). This takes the cake as the worst flight ever. There is nothing more frustrating than sitting in a plane for so long wondering when you can get out of that prison.

So, what did I make out of my 18 hours with a head cold in Lima. I think my expectations were really, really low after hearing all sorts of people trash it (my favorite was the guy who named it “Scorch”), but my little view of Lima, through the clearly biased Miraflores lens, was of nice people who are working hard. Sure they ask the gringo if he wants to buy some goods, but they don’t pester, or get angry, or follow, or generally make people uncomfortable. The most common response I heard to my grumpy & tired “no (with obligatory hand wave)” was “ok, buenos dias.”

I am looking forward to some mountain air to sooth my soul.

I don’t really even know why I am attaching pictures to this one.

Sent from a bar where I am wondering if this Pisco Sour is good for my head cold.

Carnaval, Olinda, Brazil

Carnaval doesn’t officially start in Brazil until March 4th, but the historic town of Olinda (nestled in the 3.5 million person city of Recife) gets it’s Carnaval revved up the weekend prior. It seemed like a good place to wrap up Captain Keywan’s portion of the trip.

Though we missed the massive displays and floats, we also missed the millions of people and the outrageous prices (which is very welcome after two months on the road). It was two nights of following bands around through the cobblestone streets with lots of drunk Brazilians singing their hearts out. The $0.75 tall boys of Skol beer (served up from dozens of cooler buggies following the action) were enjoyed by all.

Speaking of cheap drinks, the daytime Caiparinhas ($1.25) quench the thirst during the crazy hot days in a city with tons of unswimmable beaches due to a rash of shark attacks over the past 30 years.

The big Carnaval floats rolled up on Sunday morning. It was exciting to see all the people rolling in for the big start. It was not exciting to drive the little Fiat (which is pretty well beat to crap by now) out of Olinda in this mess. It included quite a few u-turns and one mildly nerve racking dash in the wrong direction on a one way street while dodging thousands of brightly dressed, already drinking Brazilians. We survived though, and now I am back to the southern beaches for a couple of days to scuba dive before I have to leave Brazil.

I wish the pictures could really do this justice.

Around Natal, Brazil….

We arrived at our next location after being pulled over by the military police who used the excuse that “it is illegal to drive in flip flops in Brazil” to completely search our car. Of course, they found nothing, and the “no speak Portuguese” response to every question seemed to save us from a ticket. The funniest part is that EVERYONE in Brazil wears flip flops all the time.

We settled in the little town of Pipa. Great surfing (which we never did), great lounging, a bay where you can ride the waves with dolphins at low tide, and an awesome pousada with hammocks, pool, and a truly sweet innkeeper.

We used this as home base and ventured out to discover nearby dune backed beaches. One particular highlight involved us trying to use the Fiat as a beach buggy. Needless to say, our wallets were slightly lighter after we enlisted the help of some big muscled locals to get the poor little Fiat out of deep sand and back on the road.

Another highlight was whipping captain in our race down the sandboarding dune. Ha, ha!

All in all, it’s been a great week up here. Now we are heading back down to Olinda for a couple of days of Carnival.